Real Cool Stuff about Calvin Coolidge
1. Even though he was known as Silent Cal, he held more press conferences than any other president. “He held 520 presidential press conferences, meeting with reporters more regularly than any chief executive before or since” (p. 7).
2. At the 1920 Republican convention, Coolidge’s name was seconded by a woman, for the first time in history. “Coolidge’s nomination drew some notice for being seconded by a woman, the actress Alexandra Carlisle—a historic first for a second” (p. 37).
3. Coolidge was the first president to add a speechwriter to the executive payroll. “In effect, Welliver served as a White House publicity man and the first dedicated presidential speechwriter. (It was Welliver who coined the phrase ‘Founding Fathers,’ though Harding often received the credit” (p. 48).
4. It was under the Coolidge administration that J. Edgar Hoover began his long tenure as head of the FBI. “Coolidge also fired William Burns, the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who was implicated in the scandals, replacing him with a young man with a reputation for honesty, J. Edgar Hoover” (p. 53).
5. Coolidge wasn’t just one of the first presidents to appear in a talking film but one of the first Americans ever. “In April 1925, he became one of the first Americans to appear in a talking film” (p. 64).
6. This item is specifically for all you Georgians out there because I found Stone Mountain mentioned in this book. Sadly, it’s mentioned in reference to the resurgent KKK. “But in 1915, a Methodist preacher in Stone Mountain, Georgia, reconstituted the infamous brotherhood. Preaching not only white supremacy but also the inferiority of Catholics and Jews, he won few adherents until the early 1920s, when membership mushroomed to five million—not only in the South but also in other rural regions where old-stock Protestants feared the swelling urban masses” (p. 85).
7. In the summer of 1924, a horrific tragedy struck the Coolidge family. John and Calvin Jr., Coolidge’s sons, were playing tennis on the White Hours lawns. Calvin Jr., 16-years-old, hadn’t bothered to wear socks that hot summer day and contracted a particularly awful blood blister with a staph infection. Since antibiotics were yet to be invented, the doctors tried everything they could but to no avail. It became infected and the boy was dead in one week.
8. Coolidge and Dawes won the 1924 election in another Republican landslide vote. In fact, Davis, the Democratic presidential candidate, had the worst showing of any Democrat in history. “Davis garnered the lowest percentage of the vote of any Democrat ever” (p. 106).
9. Coolidge was the first president to broadcast his oath of office over the radio. “The president’s speech was unmemorable, historic only as another first in readio broadcasting” (p. 109).
10. Coolidge was the first president to visit Cuba. “Leaving the United States for only the second time in his life, Coolidge delivered the keynote address, arguing that the American nations shared common values and goals. But Coolidge’s overture—the first trip by a sitting president to Cuba—couldn’t suppress long-standing resentments” (p. 120).
11. In 1927, the Mississippi flooded and it would be considered one of the worst natural disasters in American history. “Indeed, these floods would culminate in the worst natural disaster in American history until Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in 2005” (p. 132).
I think that Greenberg does a great job with Coolidge. While this bio does not rank up in my list of all time favorites, I was really impressed with how the author handles Coolidge’s life. I knew very little about Coolidge initially and it seemed that over the years had learned even less about him. Yet Greenberg gives a quite thorough account of this intensely personal man.
I also enjoyed Greenberg’s discussion on the various reasons for the stock market crash and the Great Depression. I can understand why most people would blame Coolidge, not Hoover, for the problems with the economy in the 1930s. Coolidge had a very laissez-faire attitude concerning business and business regulations that affected the economic problems later on. In an effort to defend Coolidge’s role in the subsequent crash, Greenberg sought to detail the reasons for the economic collapse but to also give credit where credit was due. In other words, part of the problem of that era was certainly Coolidge’s hands-off attitude towards the business sector. Here are Greenberg’s reasons for the Great Depression (p. 147-150):
1.) An unregulated stock market.
2.) The money supply and the role of the FED
3.) Coolidge’s fiscal policy that encouraged speculation and promoted inequality.
4.) The increasing farm crisis
5.) The imbalance in global trade and credit
6.) The demise of the gold standard.
Do you agree with this list of factors? I have a feeling that we will be introduced to more reasons in the Hoover and Roosevelt bios. I’ll be interested in seeing if those other authors agree with Greenberg on governmental policies and their impact on the economic situation in the United States during the 1930s. Let’s see, shall we?
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